


Rose Banners and Horse Stew

by afewreelthoughts



Series: Ours is the Angst [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Growing Up, Siege of Storm's End, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 08:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10805886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: In the midst of the Siege of Storm's End, Stannis Baratheon tries to teach his brother about right and wrong.





	Rose Banners and Horse Stew

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything or make any money from any of it. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

“It’s wrong to eat the horses, and it’s wrong to eat the dogs,” Stannis’s baby brother said to the bowls of stew that lay before them. His face was pale and peaked, his blue eyes too wide.

Through his worry, Stannis could not help but be a little proud. Perhaps his little brother would grow up – if the Tyrells allowed him to – with a better sense of right and wrong than Robert ever had.

“Renly, we cannot feed the horses and the dogs. We can hardly feed ourselves.”

“But it’s wrong.”

“Yes,” Stannis said. “It is.” He put a hand on his baby brother’s shoulder. “But sometimes you have to do a little wrong thing to do a big good thing.”

“That makes it okay?”

“That makes it necessary.” He squeezed Renly’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t want our people to die, now would you?”

Renly’s blue eyes went even wider. “No.”

“Then we have to eat the horses, and we have to eat the dogs. All of us. Even you.”

Renly seemed to consider that seriously. “I’ll eat when I’m hungry,” he finally said.

“And you’re not hungry now?” Stannis asked. They had not eaten since the morning.

Renly’s stomach growled.

“No,” he said.

Stannis took his brother’s bowl of stew down to the great hall, wondering if he had done the right thing. He sat, watching his food grow cold. It felt wrong to eat when his brother was going hungry.

But true to his word, Renly joined Stannis within the hour, with a smile on his face. He ate the stew without complaint.

“Maybe you could go around the castle tonight and cheer up the smallfolk?” Stannis suggested after they were done with their quick meal.

It was a task that Stannis himself hated, even in times of plenty, so much so that he often denied its importance. The faces of the smallfolk always seemed to reproach him, and he could not abide their unspoken accusations. He wanted to shout when they stared at him like that, to demand what he had done to them. Since the siege had begun, he knew what their answer would be.

He sent Renly out with the castellan, a man named Cortnay Penrose who managed to be both warm and stern, and in doing so unsettled Stannis. Stannis almost insisted his brother dress more plainly, before he remembered no one could eat velvet or drink silk. He did insist on Baratheon colors; the people should remember who was keeping them alive, after all.

Renly did complain then. He hated black.

When Renly came back later that night, he was full of energy and abuzz with questions. “Cortnay took me up to the battlements to see the Tyrells!” He climbed into the spare chair in Stannis's chamber, sat on the edge, and and kicked his legs.

“He should not have done that.” The last time Stannis took Renly to the battlements, they had seen Mace Tyrell and his bannermen feasting, and Renly had become convinced, if only he asked, that they would share some of their food. He had sobbed all night when Stannis would not let him go.

“I wanted to see," his brother said. "It's not his fault."

“Then he should have told you no.” In Stannis’s opinion, his brother needed to hear that word more often than not.

“Tell me about the Tyrells.”

Stannis put down his pen. “The Tyrells are bad people. They always pick the side they think will win, not the one they think is right. They have no morals.”

“What about what you said about bad making good?”

Stannis sighed. He should never have tried to explain a concept so nuanced to his six-year-old brother.

“Bad does not make good, Renly. Sometimes some people have to do little bad things in order to do other good things, like eating dogs and horses to survive, but the Tyrells are not like that. They are not eating to survive, they are supporting an evil man, an evil king, for their own advancement. They are all bad.”

Renly looked serious again, quietly considering what Stannis had said. Then he smiled. “I like the roses. On their banners.”

Of course he did. Stannis put a hand on his brother's shoulder and addressed him earnestly. “That is what is so bad about them. They hide their thorns with roses.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They appear to be one thing, but they are another. The Tyrells have a beautiful castle, covered in flowers, but that does not mean they are good people.”

Renly nodded.

Stannis leaned further forward. “It is very important to me that you understand this. When you are older, you might be tempted by bad people, and you may not see that they are bad because they are beautiful.”

“Beautiful people are bad?”

“They can be. What you see on the outside may be wrong. And I want to tell you this because you love beautiful things so much.”

“I shouldn’t like them?”

“You should know that things aren’t always what they appear.”

Renly nodded again. Stannis turned back to his desk, hoping that his brother understood.


End file.
